Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Oh Randall. How you love computers. Today you again blurred the line between a living thing and a computer. Ha ha, Randall! You have only done this several times before! See comics 149, 185, 188, 215, 329, 352, 364, 371, 379 and probably a lot more.

So what does he do today. Ok, you put a computer into a ball and made it act like a hampster. Then you gave us another of your schematic diagrams meant to show how seriously you have considered this, and to top it off, finished with another joke about how much you love python. We get it! You like python! It's easy to use! You told us this in comic 353! and 409! And on your blog! It was never all that funny!

Without being a Computer Scientist, a Computer Engineer, or a Robot Enthusiast, I don't think you could appreciate this comic, and I'm guessing you're not any of those things which is probably why you don't like it.

However, I feel it is unfair to bash a joke which was obviously not meant for you. It's akin to calling two people idiots for sharing an inside joke you've been left out of.

This goes for both the hamster robot and the python joke (I actually find the python quips quite amusing as a programmer).

I'm not sure how much that Penny Arcade comic actually relates... I'm not saying people aren't free to criticize this comic, I'm saying people who haven't experienced certain things might not like this comic. Just like, in some inside jokes, if someone wasn't "there" then they won't get the joke, even if it is laboriously explained to them (this is addressing your previous responses to the "inside joke"-like argument).

"What life experience do you think I should have had in order to be worthy of this joke?"

"Worthy of this joke" seems like a silly thing to say, and you're likely just saying it to try and make an affront on me ("look at this douche, look what he's saying to me"), but that's alright, that seems to be the way your write now..

Anyways, life experiences that would have better enabled you to enjoy, say the python joke(s), might include spending many hours on end making a simple textual table in C++. Whereas anyone programming in PHP, JavaScript, or perhaps Python could have written something in just one line to do what you've spent an entire day doing. It's not an incredibly hilarious joke but it's certainly amusing and it gets a small chuckle out of me almost every time.

As far as the robot goes, I think a sincere love of robots and strange but amazing gadgets would probably be a requirement. I can't really think of an experience that would suffice.

However, now that I have laboriously explained what I believe to be the experiences required to enjoy the joke, I know that you will still not like the joke (what a surprise). I also know, because of some desire to be loud, you will still post about every single comic, whether or not you have any interest in the topics being discussed.

I wish you would leave xkcd alone, and instead post about political comics in other states about obscure laws which have no affect on you, but I realize this is unrealistic (I also realize you will have something to say about that analogy, please save your breath). So instead of wishing this, I wish for you to stop being insulting to the author of xkcd, and also for you to be considerably less bitchy. I feel like if you did this your posts might return to being extremely entertaining as thoughtful criticism, instead of extremely annoying as the bitchings of a man with a blog.

i don't know if you are saying that I am bitchy now but used to not be, or if you are saying I was bitchy in april 2008 but used to not be. I'd call this post pretty bitchy but this is how I've always written, this was one of the first posts I wrote.

Honestly, looking back, I can admit that this comic was a lot better than a lot of what followed. I like the lower left panel in particular. It would make a nice picto-blog post, given that he thought out the design so well.

Mostly what I'm complaining about in this comic is how repetitive it is.

I do love robots and gadgets, but I don't think that affects how I view the comic. What is your logic there?

What the hell is this?

Welcome. This is a website called XKCD SUCKS which is about the webcomic xkcd and why we think it sucks. My name is Carl and I used to write about it all the time, then I stopped because I went insane, and now other people write about it all the time. I forget their names. The posts still seem to be coming regularly, but many of the structural elements - like all the stuff in this lefthand pane - are a bit outdated. What can I say? Insane, etc.

I started this site because it had been clear to me for a while that xkcd is no longer a great webcomic (though it once was). Alas, many of its fans are too caught up in the faux-nerd culture that xkcd is a part of, and can't bring themselves to admit that the comic, at this point, is terrible. While I still like a new comic on occasion, I feel that more and more of them need the Iron Finger of Mockery knowingly pointed at them. This used to be called "XKCD: Overrated", but then it fell from just being overrated to being just horrible. Thus, xkcd sucks.

Here is a comic about me that Ann made. It is my favorite thing in the world.

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